Commander Alpha

Chapter 23

Luke's POV

"Again." I demanded. The camper, Kiara, picked up her sword from where she'd dropped it after I disarmed her. We fought again, sweat pouring down her forehead. The Warriors had been training the campers extremely hard for the past six days in preparation for the war. Silena, who had become surprisingly good at sword fighting in her time with Chaos, and I were training a fourth of the campers to on sword fighting; Emma and Castor were training a fourth on hand-to-hand combat and the wall; Zoë and Bianca were training a fourth of the demigods in archery; Beckendorf was working with the Hephaestus campers in the forge; Percy was training the seven on all-around, aside from archery of course. In five hundred years, he had not gotten any better. If it hadn't been for my Chaos reflexes, I would've been impaled by several hundred awry arrows from Percy.
I had paired up the campers. I watched as they battled each other fiercely after I disarmed Kiara again. I could tell the girl was beginning to get discouraged. She stood up, sword in hand.
"Hey," I said. "Good job. Don't feel bad. I've been training for five hundred years, and even before that, I was the best swordsman of my generation." I explained. "Raise your guard, and don't leave your side as exposed when you lunge." Kiara nodded thankfully at my advice. Just to humor her, I allowed her to disarm me. The look of pride on her face made me happy, even through the ever-looming threat of war that would begin tomorrow.
Chiron blew the horn that signaled the end of training and the beginning of diner. Our last training sessions. The campers had definitely improved by leaps and bounds, but a single question remained in everyone's minds. Would it be enough? The atmosphere in the pavilion was nervous, much more serious than I had ever seen it. The fact that we would be fighting the hardest war that had taken place in the past several millennia seemed to finally be sinking in. I sat silently, thinking.
'Hey, Perce.' I mind spoke.
'Mmh?'
'Why don't you reveal yourself to the camp? It would really boost camper morale' There was a minute of silence.
'I don't want to make them unfocused, especially this close to the fight. I think I'll reveal after the war, in case everyone's feeling down.'
'Good plan.' The Warriors were silent for the rest of the meal. We'd fought in many wars, but this was different. We weren't fighting with some random species on some random planet. We were fighting with family on the place we called home.
As the solemn meal drew to a close, Chiron made his way to the front of the pavilion.
"Campers... Warriors..." he began. "Tomorrow we fight as one. I am not denying that this will be a very difficult war, but thanks to the Warriors of Chaos," Chiron nodded at us in appreciation. "This war will made much easier. The gods will be arriving tomorrow after breakfast. They have already been informed of the plan and the prophecy. Now, I suspect that the best thing for us would be an early retreat to bed. Get all of the sleep you can, you're going to need energy lots of extra energy tomorrow." Wow. That must've been the first time in Camp Half-Blood history that not a single camper had complained about an early lights-out. Then again, it would also be the first time that we fought in a war against five of the most powerful beings in history.
The Warriors followed the campers as they flooded out of the pavilion to their respective cabins.
"Whelp," Castor proclaimed as soon as we stepped through the door. "Tomorrow's going to be fun."
"Alright, we need to be fully rested for tomorrow, so go to bed." I could tell that Silena had put some charmspeak into the last part of her command, as my legs led me directly to my bed, which I immediately flopped onto. I struggled out of my cloak and armor, not getting off my mattress, and pulled myself underneath the covers.
Of course, in my typical unlucky fashion, I could not fall asleep. It felt like it had been simultaneously hours and seconds since Silena had told us to go to bed. I wished that she'd said "Go to sleep," instead, but then we would have all just fallen asleep where we were standing. Pro, we would be well-rested from falling asleep right away. Con, we'd be really sore for tomorrow's battle. I was halfway to getting Silena to get her to charmspeak my to sleep, but I as I debated the possible repercussions of those actions (sleepy Silena was not a nice Silena), I drifted into a restless slumber.

• • •

When I woke up, the sun was not yet out. I checked my clock. 3:28. Great. I could tell there would be no use in trying to go back to sleep, as I already felt wide awake. After laying for a second, I decided to go for a quick jog around camp. I headed out of the cabin, and began to run.
I was passing by Half-Blood Hill when a silver arrow came millimeters from hitting me. My reflexes came into play as I snatched the arrow out of the air, summoned my own bow from my bracelet, knocked the arrow, and aimed it at my attacker. This all happened in a span of two seconds. When I snapped out of my 'defense mode' as I liked to call it, I found myself aiming my bow at the very surprised Hunters of Artemis. More specifically, Thalia, who had her bow drawn. I had a sudden feeling that something was missing, but ignored it. I put down my bow.
"Hello, I am Beta of-"
"Luke!" Thalia screeched. Oh, my cloak, that's what I was missing. Oops. The war hadn't even started and I was already going to die.
"Don't hurt me!" I whined as Thalia shot arrow after arrow at me. I dodged them all, naturally. Seeing that this method of killing me wouldn't work, she resorted to her hunting knives. I dodged and deflected them easily. Thalia yelled in frustration, and a bolt of lightning fell from the skies and shocked me with a force that should have killed me, but instead felt like a small shock, like one you get on a trampoline. Compared to Zeus's master bolt, it was nothing. "Ow," I complained, nonetheless.
Thalia spluttered. "Bu-But you're... you're dead."
"Obviously not," I countered.
"You- you idiot!" She screeched at me. She attacked me again, this time with her fists. After seeing the heart-broken look on her face, I didn't have it in me to deflect her bows. In a few minutes, she tired herself out. She turned to the hunters, who were currently under her command, Artemis attending to her godly duties somewhere. "Give us a minute. Go to the Artemis cabin." A few hunters looked ready to object, but a withering glare from Thalia silenced them. The group of immortal man-hating teenage girls headed down the hill, toward the Artemis cabin. I turned to Thalia. She glared at me. Only one thought was in my head.
'Well, now I'm dead.'